Innovation in Partnerships: Making a Business Case for Peace
December 4, 2018 New York City
On December 4th, IPI, One Earth Future, UN Office for Partnerships, UN Peacebuilding Support Office, UN Global Compact, and the Permanent Mission of Republic of Korea launched a workshop series designed to catalyze engagement across public and private sectors and build new kinds of partnerships. While the private sector knows how to engage with topics such as economic growth and climate change, there is less understanding on how it can contribute to sustaining peace and the 2030 Agenda and how it can work together with the UN, member states and civil society.
The workshop was also focused on countries that need to scale up investments, particularly those that the private sector regard as too high-risk to engage.The aim of creating this space was to address the main issue that has hindered effective cross-sectoral collaboration: an understanding gap between UN communities, civil society organizations, and private sector actors. Each of these communities interact with issues of peace and conflict in a different way, and without shared understanding about different starting points, attempts at partnerships may flounder. This workshop encouraged small-group discussion with country representatives, private sector actors, and civil society at the same table to develop shared understanding of each other and how collective work could be effective.